I am the anchor to every oracle.
Rock records all replies, endlessly
overwritten. Chip–voiced, lies layered as gypsum dust
over tones that cut like calcite. Incisive;
dug kilometres deep into the desiccated rift,
Nile and Rhone remember ripples at their deltas.
Whispers in the time before myth, echoing
on eye–searing white across an endless cauldron.
Gibraltar’s gates opened into the heart of the ocean.
Well below all sunk ships
left lyre–boned for the flashing rhythms of fish,
the gentle shores, swallowed ten metres a day,
shelve to the sill of Sicily, beset by questions:
asking after the mood of drowned sagebrush,
slipped under the windwoven waves, silent still
and sleeping.
